A trio of pinots from Anthill Farms

I have had the opportunity to taste and drink the wines from Anthill Farms quite often the last year, at my home, with my friends, at top restaurants in Napa Valley and Sonoma, and I also visited the winery in Dry Creek Valley to find out more about this small operation.
Anthill Farms is the result of three friends with a passion for Pinot Noir. Anthony Filiberti was born in Sonoma and worked with wines at Bergström Winery in Oregon and later on in Sonoma. Webster Marquez grew up in Virginia and didn't have any connection with wine, except from loving it and drinking it. The third guy, David Low, was born in Kansas but went to university in Berkeley and found his passion for wine there.

The common denominator was the legendary pinot producer Williams Selyem, where they all worked as cellar rats over a couple of years. Inspired by the outstanding quality of the wines, the dream of making their own wines was inevitable. In 2004 their dream came true.
They bought some grapes, and rented space at Papapietro Perry Winery in Dry Creek Valley, where David Low worked (and still does) as assistant winemaker with Ben Papapietro. Since this is a small winery, Papapietro Perry produces around 8 000 cases annually, they have now moved into a neighboring warehouse to make their wines, around 2 000 cases of 12 bottles per year.

The first vintage of Anthill Farms (the name doesn't mean anything, it's just a funny name revealing the trio is working with small vineyard lots) was 2004, and it didn't take too long before word to mouth gave them a red hot reputation.

The ambition is simple, to produce outstanding and elegant wines without too much influence of oak. It sound pretty much what I hear in Burgundy, where I travel a total of four weeks every year. They never use more than 40 percent of new oak (less for the elegant Mendocino wines), which is very smart, but not too common in California. If the vintage allows, they work with some whole cluster (up to 20-25 percent), and compared to the wines of Papapietro Perry (even though it is a completely different company, I think the comparison is relevant), the Anthill Farms trio works with longer cold soak prior to the fermentation.
As of the 2010 vintage, Anthill Farms produces six wines of Pinot Noir and two of Syrah. "We're not aiming for more than that", David Low says. Focus is important, and besides that they all love their other jobs.
These are some of the finest Pinot Noir wines made in California today, still they are not too expensive. They sell for around 40-50 dollars a bottle in the few shops that have them.

2007 Pinot Noir Comptche Ridge Vineyard / 92 p
Grapes for this wines is purchased from a tiny vineyard, 0.80 hectares, north of Navarro Vineyards but outside the appellation of Anderson Valley, hence the generic Mendocino County designation. It's owned by the Weir family and planted to the old Pinot Noir clone from Swan Vineyards in Russian River Valley. It's just a few miles from the coast, so it's a very cool site.
To be a Pinot Noir, color is quite dark, but that's not so unusual for Pinot Noir grown in such cold regions, where the grapes gets small and the skin grows thick. It's a lovely wine with a great personality and a quite intense perfume of dark cherries, ripe wild raspberries and sloe, and there's almost a Gevrey-Chambertin like punch to it as well. The oak, just 20 percent new, is beautifully well integrated, and alcohol at 13.7 percent. Therefore it's no surprise the one may put it in Burgundy if tasting it blind. It's medium bodied but intense and very silky, with a slightly sweetish texture and a lively acidity. I tasted it the first time a year ago, and again some months later, and found it to be a bit closed in the finish then, but now it's lovely. I prefer to decant it just prior to pouring it, so the aromas evolve a bit.
This time, I left a glass in the bottle to taste the day after, and although I still loved it for its intensity and lingering aftertaste, I missed some of the more aromatic perfumes from when it was newly opened.
Drink it 2011-2017

2007 Pinot Noir Abbey Harris Vineyard / 91-92 p
The 0.60 hectare Abbey Harris Vineyard is a lease, it's located at 330 meters altitude above Boonville in the warmer southern part of Anderson Valley. That's the reason why this wine have slightly higher alcohol, 14.1 percent. Compared to the Comptche Ridge Vineyard selection, this wine see around 30 percent new French oak barrels, but again the oak is not at all important in the flavor profile. Again, one could call this wine "Burundian like", at least when talking about the aromas. However, it doesn't have the Burundian mineral nuances. I forgot to ask David Low from Anthill Farms when I tasted the wine with him, if they use some whole clusters in the fermentation, at least there's some herbaceous notes reminiscent of stems. At this level, I like it (as I love the wines from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, where they uses a hundred percent whole clusters), and it certainly adds some complexity to the wine. Acidity is lively and it gives freshness to the slightly more riper fruit, and the aftertaste is long and delicious. Decanting recommendations are the same as for the wine above (and all wines from Anthill Farms), and I'd prefer to serve it at 16-17 degrees Celsius. I'd probably use a burgundy glass with a wide bowl, but intense pinot wines like these may also be served in Bordeaux shaped glasses.
Drink it 2011-2017

2008 Pinot Noir Tina Marie Vineyard / 90 p
Please understand this tasting note is 2008, a vintage that in some parts of Sonoma (the coast line especially) to some extent was affected by the forest fires in Mendocino in August. Growers all over Sonoma Coast and the western part of Russian River (this vineyard is located in the cool Green Valley) told me that the smoke from the fires went out to the ocean, and was then pushed back in over land further south in Sonoma. I have tasted some wines from Sonoma, even down in Carneros (!) that had that smoky taint, that reminds me of the smoky flavor in some South African wines. Based on this theory, and I find just a "shadow" of burnt grape skins in this wine, I'm very positive about the 2008 vintage of the Tina Marie Vineyard. Yet, I have given the 2007 vintage a higher score (92-93 p) in previous tastings.
Okay, back to the wine.
Color is relatively dark for Pinot Noir, again it's a very cool site in Green Valley (which is cooler than most parts of Sonoma Coast), and the perfume is so seductive with its intense floral (rose petals) and reddish fruitiness (raspberries, sweet cherries, rosehip). Like the other pinots, it's silky and fresh with a moderate alcohol and lively acidity, the oak is perfectly integrated, and the aftertaste lingering. Compared to the wines from Mendocino, this one have a deeper and more concentrated fruit, therefore it's not as classic as those. However, it's seductive enough to make you wish for another glass, and another.

Drink it 2011-2016

No oak please!

Chardonnay is by far the most popular white wine in California, so it’s no surprise that it’s the most widely planted green grape variety in the state. However, it wasn’t in the past – few grape growers planted this variety in the 1960s, and those who did, were recommended not to. The change came in the 1970s, and even more in the 1980s, when Chardonnay took its first steps to its present glory. Over the years, the oak fermented wine from Chardonnay had become the most typical California white wine. Also, the style changed into something very different from what was found in the rest of the world from this classic variety. The American winemakers had finally defined their own style for the beloved Chardonnay. The wines were now riper (most of them were often harvested at high Brix levels), richer and seasoned with sweetish and toasted oak. At first, everybody seemed to like them, and sales skyrocketed.
In the early 90s, a change came – a movement known as ABC, Anything But Chardonnay, came. More and more, consumers had enough of the sweetish, overly ripe and rich, and oaky chardonnays. In Australia some winemakers started to ferment Chardonnay in stainless steel tanks and labeled the wines as “Unoaked Chardonnay”, a style that over the years gained popularity. In the mid 90s, dry and crisp wines of aromatic grape varieties such as Riesling, Grüner Veltliner and Albariño came in fashion just because they were crisp and always unoaked. More than the ABC movement, this new trend “forced” winemakers of Chardonnay to change their philosophies.
Since then, I’ve seen this change at almost all wineries I have visited. In a long term perspective, vineyards have been planted in cooler areas than in the past to get grapes of this new, more elegant quality. But equally important, grapes are now harvested at lower Brix to retain a fresh natural acidity (and avoid acidification), to get lower alcohol levels, keep more bright fruit flavors and more floral notes, and to give an overall better balance. In the wine cellars, some winemakers started to work with cold soak to extract more aromatic compounds from the grape skins, but more important, the use of vessels for fermentation changed dramatically.
From using one hundred percent oak, and a high proportion of that would be new oak, winemakers moved into more neutral oak (one to five year old barrels) and larger barrels, or even into stainless steel tanks, smaller steel drums or cement eggs. At first, this was only done for wines in moderate price levels, but in the early 2000s, more and more high end unoaked chardonnays (20 dollars, and above) were introduced on the market. At Melville Estate in Santa Rita Hills, winemaker Greg Brewer started to make a very crisp Chardonnay Cuvée Inox, which inspired him to make a series of chardonnays fermented in steel and neutral oak under his own label Diatom. In Russian River Valley, Marimar Torres started to make her Chardonnay Acero, fully fermented in stainless steel. These pioneer wines, and many more with them, are now just part of what is widely seen on the market – fresh, crisp and aromatic chardonnays with no or just little oak.

2008 Chardonnay from Rivino Winery / 88 p
From the 80 hectares Schrader Ranch located between US 101 and Russian River in Redwood Valley in the heartland of Mendocino, Jason McConnell and his wife Susanne Jahnke-McConnell started to make small amount of wine in 2008. The ranch was bought in 1993 by Gordon Jahnke, a law professor from British Columbia in Canada, but he had no intention to make wine. Instead grapes were sold to other wineries, among them Kendall-Jackson. Still around 95 percent of the grapes are sold, but under the stewardship of Jason McConnell, who started to make some wine for fun in 2005, there’s now a tiny production of around 1 300 cases per year.
The grapes, only Dijon clones from Block 2 close to the river, were harvested at 24 Brix, and whole cluster pressed. The juice was then cold settled at 8 degrees Celsius for a few days before it was fermented for almost a month at low temperatures in a small stainless steel tank. There were no malolactic fermentation and no bâtonnage during the ageing, and the acidity feels a bit higher than the 5.6 grams per liter there is. This first vintage is a wonderful effort, it’s totally dry, fresh and ultra pure with notes of brownish-green pears (just like you’ll find in white burgundies), lemon and almonds as well as the steel itself. It's a very attractive wine.
Drink it 2011-2014.

2007 Chardonnay from Roederer Estate / 87 p
No wonder Roederer Estate in the cooler northern part of Anderson Valley is one of the best sparkling producers outside of Champagne. The climate is considered cool by Californian standards, but not as cold as in Champagne, still this wine shows a quite European structure and fruit flavor. Grapes are all estate grown, harvested at low Brix in mid September and then pressed in whole bunches. After débourbage, the juice is transferred into stainless steel tanks (80 percent) and neutral French oak barrels to ferment. The latter fraction goes through malolactic fermentation, the stainless steel one not. Tasted completely blind, one would never put this wine in California – unless you have tasted a Californian wine like this before. It’s more like the wines of Mâconnais in the southern part of Burgundy, well, not totally. It doesn’t have that kind of minerality. There’s not a single note of oak, just that fine texture that the ageing in oak, on lees, results in. It’s delicious, light and fresh, a bit short, but very elegant. The only sad thing is that production is only 200 cases, and that the wine only is sold in the tasting room at Roederer Estate in Anderson Valley. And when you are there, take the opportunity to buy some of their great sparkling wines!
Drink it 2011-2014.

2008 Chardonnay Del Lago from Ceago Vinegarden / 87 p
Ceago Vinegarden is the new home for Jim Fetzer, past president and co-owner of Fezter Vineyards before the family sold it to Browne-Forman. In 2001 he bought a 66 hectare walnut ranch close to Clear Lake in Lake County. Here he cleared land to plant 20.25 hectares of vines and made his first wine (a Cabernet Sauvignon) in 2005. This is Sauvignon Blanc and red wine country, but this wine is proof of the potential of Chardonnay. Grapes are whole cluster pressed, and the juice is the completely fermented in stainless steel tanks, but left on the lees for some months to gain texture. It’s a lovely unoaked chardonnay – very pure, crisp and fresh with notes of lemon (almost sweetish lemons) and Granny Smith, it has that typical steely character, but also some complex notes of almonds that don’t come from oak – it’s either terroir or the effect of the lees. The finish is long, and very elegant.
Drink it 2011-2013.

Greg LaFollette renaissance

WINEMAKER OF THE YEAR 2010


It’s an honor to name Greg LaFollette the California Wine Report Winemaker of the Year 2010. Greg is very skilled and a well respected winemaker who has worked in the business for two decades. With degrees in biology, chemistry and food science, he left UC Davis in 1991 to work with research in the laboratory at Beaulieu Vineyards. Here he got the opportunity to meet and work with the legendary wine consultant André Tchelistcheff.
Winemaking led him to Australia, where he worked at Yarra Ridge for a while. After that he came back to Napa Valley and Beaulieu Vineyard, then Jarvis and later on Kendall-Jackson. Greg’s main focus were now Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and he was very close to break through on his own with these varieties, when he was appointed as the winemaker at the newly established Flowers Vineyards out in the true Sonoma Coast in 1996.
Over the coming years, Flowers gained a cult status, and Greg LaFollette was now a name to watch. It was during these years, the idea of making wines under an own label came. In 2001, Greg LaFollette and his friend Greg Bjornstad founded their own label Tandem. With contracts in some of the finest vineyards in Sonoma, they started to craft some very interesting wines out of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, as well as tiny amounts of Pinot Meunier and Sangiovese (which was a very good wine!).
While making his own wines at a custom crush winery in Sebastopol, he was also hired by the new owners of De Loach Vineyards in Russian River Valley to introduce natural farming and biodynamical techniques, as well as restore and improve the quality if their wines. He didn’t only bring his skills to De Loach Vineyards, he also introduced a wide range of exciting single vineyard wines in their portfolio. By then, De Loach Vineyard was, more than in the past, a winery to count on.
A few years ago he left De Loach Vineyards to focus more on his own label, as well as consultant for other wineries. One of them was Quivera Vineyards in Dry Creek Valley, where he introduced biodynamical principles in their farming. This also resulted in big a step forward for Greg LaFollette when the owners or Quivira Vineyards, Pete and Terri Kight, bought Greg’s label Tandem in 2008 and reorganized it to LaFollette Wines. “For me it was great”, Greg told me. “Now I can focus on the vineyards and the wines – I don’t have to take care of either administration or sales”.
The new LaFollette portfolio is based on the same first class vineyards in Sonoma that Greg worked with in the past, but the wines seems to be a bit more distinct. It’s truly a renaissance for Greg LaFollette.




2009 Chardonnay Lorenzo Vineyard / 94 p
This is a great expression of 100 percent Chardonnay from the renowned 4.05 hectare Lorenzo vineyard, which was planted with (today) not specified clones back in 1974 and 1975. The vineyard itself is great, but wouldn’t have been well known unless Helen Turley made it famous under her prestigious label Marcassin in the 90s. This wine, though, is much better and far more complex. With a pH of 3.31, and no adjustment of acidity, the wine has sufficient amount of acidity to balance out any bitterness there may be from the 40 percent new French oak used for the upbringing of this wine.
Color is, of course by the young age of the wine, very pale, but clear and bright. There are a lot of things this Californian chardonnay isn’t – like big, sweet, oaky and overly alcoholic. No, this wine combines the finest of California terroir with the wise hands and skills of a smart winemaker. Greg really knows what he’s doing, and in this bottling his skills transform the grapes into something extremely lovely, and complex. The nose reveals a pure, cool and not too ripe fruit quality, but with “not too ripe” I actually mean – the nose is exceptional in its cooler style, with lemon peels, citrus, golden apples and crunchy pears. To be very honest without bragging about my frequent trips to the greatest estates in Burgundy two to three times per year, I find this wine to be quite burgundian like! However, there’s no chalky mineral aroma or flavor, but there’s enough structure in the wine for it to be described as very classic! The oak, in this wine very well integrated, is also a bit more spicy than in its burgundian counterparts.
Drink it 2010-2019.

2009 Chardonnay Manchester Ridge / 91-92 p
Located 600 meters above sea level on the first ridge from the Ocean in Mendocino, is really a challenge to work with. It ripens very late – in this vintage Greg harvested the grapes November 4, at 20.8 Brix! It covers 12.15 hectares and is planted various clones of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and in this wine there’s only the Clone 809, which is also called Chardonay Musqué. And you can tell, it adds floral and spicy notes to the wine. What Greg does, is to use a certain yeast strain to break down the linalool, the ester that give this floral note, and therefore it’s not as floral as it would have been. However, he let the juice cold soak with the skins for 32 hours during the press to extract that aroma as well as structure, and you’ll find some very fine and gentle tannins in the wine.
It’s a very interesting and elegant and highly aromatic wine with the expected floral notes as well as citrus and just a texture rather than flavor of the oak (it’s fermented and kept in neutral French oak). On the palate, its medium bodied, very fresh and lively with just a touch of tannins, and the same floral notes and fresh citrus flavors as on the nose, and the aftertaste lingers for a while. It’s good, very good, but it’s nothing for those who enjoy big, ripe, buttery and oaky American chardonnays.
Drink it 2011-2017.

2009 Pinot Noir Van der Camp Vineyard / 92-93 p
Originally planted as a sparkling wine vineyard, the Van de Kamp vineyard has turned out to be an outstanding source of Pinot Noir for still red wine. This wine is a true example to that. Color is medium high and at first the nose is a bit closed. After a few minutes in the glass, it starts to open up, and reveals a medium high intensity with a very sophisticated fruit that combines darker sweet and sour cherries with sweet raspberries. There’s also a very fine earthy note that adds complexity, and overall it’s more European in style that typical Californian – not that this is always preferred or regarded as better – after all, the wine comes from California – it’s just the impression I’d like to share. And, to be very honest, it’s just lovely. As always the wines from Van der Kamp Vineyard has a good structure of tannins and lively acidity (which is a good asset when making sparkling wines), so the wine benefit from a few years of cellaring. I kept the open bottle and tasted the wine over a period of four days, and it was just in the fourth day it lost its brightness and intensity. Day two, it actually tasted better and more complex than it did a first!
Drink it 2011-2025.

2008 Pinot Noir DuNah Vineyard / 92 p
As a consulting winemaker, Greg made wine for many wineries and families. One of them was Rick and Diane DuNah between 2003 and 2008. Their vineyard, just about four hectares in size, is situated in the cool southern eastern area of Sonoma Coast of Petaluma Gap, overlooking Cotati and San Francisco (on a clear day). It was planted in 1998 with Pinot Noir of Dijon 115, 667 and 777 clones and some Chardonnay, and prior to making their own wine all grapes were sold off to Flowers. The 2008 vintage marked the last vintage under their own label, but Greg continued to make wine from their grapes, under the LaFollette label.
“Compared to what Rick and Diane wanted, I harvest my grapes almost ten days earlier at lower Brix and pH, therefore my wine is a bit brighter and more elegant, and I also use less new oak on this wine, approximately e third compared to 40 or sometimes ever 50 percent”, Grey says. This has resulted in a much more elegant and perfumed wine.
The nose is very elegant but intense, absolutely pure with fine notes of red berries, rhubarb and blood orange, and there’s also a touch of charcuteries that adds spice and complexity. The oak is well integrated and supple, acidity as fresh and lively as expected, and the aftertaste light and elegant without any sweetness, alcohol or oak bitterness. It’s a truly lovely wine to be enjoyed by those who prefer elegance to power.
Drink it 2011-2018.

2009 Pinot Noir Sangiacomo Vineyard / 91-92 p
As for the chardonnay, the grapes for this Sangiacomo bottling, comes from the cooler western part of the vineyard, and it’s made from the clones Swan, Dijon 777 and just a little bit of Dijon 114. Vinification is the same as for the other pinots. On the nose, the wine offers a wide range of red berries, also a slight red floral note, just a slight spiciness of the oak, and a kind of wild earthiness that Greg often refer to as “sauvage”, and that might derive from the Dijon 14 clone (if I’m correct), which adds an interesting energy to the wine. On the palate, there is a fine sweetness (I often find it in the wine from this site) which is perfectly well balanced with a lively acidity, the texture of the oak, and a good but ripe and well balanced tannic structure that will help this wine to age.
Drink it 2011-2019.

2009 Pinot Meunier Van der Kamp Vineyard / 90 p
The Pinot Meunier section in this vineyard was planted in 1959 and 1960, and these are the oldest vine of that champagne variety in California. I find it very interesting and exciting that Greg actually makes a varietal wine out of it – it’s rarely seen elsewhere on Planet Wine. The grapes are whole cluster fermented in closed stainless steel tanks (almost the maceration carbonique method) with its natural yeast. It’s a fine wine for sure, but it doesn’t offer the same complexity as the pinots, still you’ll find floral notes, raspberries, strawberries, a good acidity, just a hint of earthy notes (from the stems, I guess) and a fine tannic structure in your tasting notes. In this vintage, Greg made just 48 cases. It’s a fun wine to pour in a blind tasting, but I’d rather finish it with a roasted chicken or some veal with mushrooms. Serve it as the pinots, at 15-16 degrees Celsius in a burgundy glass.
Drink it 2011-2017.

2006 Syrah Alder Springs Vineyard from Pax Wine Cellars

I didn’t tell the story of Pax Mahle and his Pax Wine Cellars before he left in 2008 to set up a new winery, Wind Gap Wines, to make quite different wines, more elegant to say. The wines of Pax Wine Cellers were, and still are under the name of Donolan Wines, deep, extracted and intense, but of great quality, but I doubt they will ever be as profound as they were under the stewardship of Pax. Time will tell, I’ll go there on my research trip in Sonoma and Mendocino in December.
The Pax Wine Cellars was founded in 2000 by Pax Mahle, a young and talented former wine salesman of Dean & Deluca who turned into a self made winemaker of cult status. With a kind of European attitude to wine, his winemaking resulted in relatively elegant and sometimes classic structured wines with Californian body and fruitiness. It was really exciting. The reason for the great structure of tannins and acidity is the cooler vineyard sites, among them the Alder Springs Vineyard, from which Pax made a selection of wines of the Syrah clones 99, 174, 300, 383, 470, 525 and 877 from several lots. He also planted some Roussanne, Marsanne and Viognier here.
“I found this vineyard, at the time quite unknown, after tasting some pinots from Patz & Hall, and I totally understood that it had a great potential”, Pax told me.
Other great cool vineyards where grapes were sourced from are the Walker Hill Vineyard and the Lauterbach Hill Vineyard in Russian River, as well as the even cooler Griffins Lair close to Keller Estate in the Petaluma Gap area.
A selection of the finest wines included the lovely white Nepenthe (a blend of Marsanne, Roussanne and Viognier from Alder Springs Vineyard, the two very well made interpretations of the wines of Châteauneuf-du-Pape; Cuvée Moriah and the even better Alder Springs Cuvée, as well as the two selections of Syrah from Alder Springs Vineyard; the floral and spicy The Terraces and the very intense but firmly structured The Emerald Pool.
In 2008, annual production were at around 6 000 cases.

2006 Syrah Alder Springs Vineyard / 92-95 p
This 100 percent Syrah wine in just gorgeous, however not too charming and not a vine to recommend for those who seek silkiness in a wine. Color is dark and dense, almost black purple and opaque and of course this wine is still just a baby. It hard to tell that it has been raised in 80 percent new French oak barrels, it’s more easy to understand that a third of the grapes bunches were not destemmed – there’s a complex, very spicy and cedar like note that derives from the inclusion of stems, but there’s no green and herbaceous flavors at all. Since this vineyard is located 800 meters above sea level in the cooler part of Mendocino, the fruit flavors are very dark and intensive, at first with sweet and ripe flavors thanks to a long hang time, but with a great portion of elegance. Over the six hours the wine sat in the decanter, it opened up more and more, and the more it sat there, the more complex it became. And it’s just beautiful!
On the palate it’s as dark and fruit driven as on the nose, but as usual (from this vineyard site) the tannins are firm – ripe and of highest quality, but very firm. There’s also a fresh acidity to hold back sweetness, and even though there’s enough of greatness to enjoy at this young stage, this is a wine to cellar a few more years. Well, unless you serve it to a dish that balances the tannins and makes the wine a bit leaner.
Drink it 2012-2021.

2004 The McNab from Bonterra Vineyards

There is no question about the popularity of ecological wines. At one of the pioneering wineries, Fetzer Vineyards, the production has increased almost tenfold since early 90s. They were early into this field, when they founded Bonterra Vineyards in 1983. By 1996 the production of ecological wines had increased to 75 000 cases per year, just to see a production of 160 000 cases the year after. Today the production has reached almost four million cases!
Bonterra wines are honest, well made but seldom very exciting, although the quartet of Bonterra Roussanne, Bonterra Chardonnay (a big seller), Bonterra Cabernet Sauvignon (a great value) and the sweet Bonterra Muscat are very good indeed.
Around 153 hectares is under vine at Bonterra Ranch in Mendocino, and it is all farmed either ecological or biodynamic. Since 2001 they also own the 51 hectare McNab Ranch, in the 1800s a sheep farm but since 1996 a certified organic vineyard, and now also by Demeter certified as a biodynamic vineyard. Form here, they make their prestige wine with the same name.

2004 The McNab / 86-87 p
This is a blend of approximately 65-70 percent Cabernet Sauvignon, 15-20 percent Merlot och 15 percent Petite Sirah, the latter grape from 45 year old vines. It’s made in a traditional way, with fermentation in stainless steel tanks with is natural yeast and regular remontage as the method for extraction. After fermentation, the wines are transferred into French oak barrels to undergo malolactic fermentation and maturation during 22-25 months.
It’s relatively dark, still youthful with a slight purple rim, and the nose is rich and intense with loads of dark berries with some notes of raisons and currants, also with a typical vanilla note from the oak. On the palate, it’s lush and fruit forward with notes of dark berries, fine but not lively acidity, well integrated oak flavors and a moderate alcohol. It’s a good wine, but it lacks the complexity of a great wine, and also the aftertaste is somehow a bit short. Still, it’s delicious with steaks or venison. I would decant it half an hour before drinking it, and serve it in a glass of Bordeaux type.
Drink it 2010-2016.